Mormon Battalion

In Brigham Young — Pioneer Prophet, the Mormon Battalion is described as “the only military unit in American history recruited on the basis of religion.” It was raised during the Latter-day Saints’ westward exodus, with Brigham Young agreeing to supply men for U.S. service. The biography reads the episode as a study in Young’s misjudgment of the political moment: Young “misjudged Polk, who harbored no ill will toward the church,” and in hoping the battalion would secure Mormon loyalty to the United States, President Polk in turn “misjudged the depth of the Mormons’ resentment of their treatment in Missouri and Illinois.” The battalion sits in the book’s broader migration arc, in which Young — cast by his followers as a Moses leading “American Israelites” to a sanctuary “far away in the West” — consolidated leadership while relocating thousands of religious refugees.

Context: The Mormon Battalion was a volunteer infantry unit of roughly 500 Latter-day Saint men who served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War (1846–1847), marching from Council Bluffs to San Diego in one of the longest infantry marches in U.S. history. Their pay helped fund the Mormon migration to the Salt Lake Valley.

Where this appears

• Brigham Young — Pioneer Prophet — described as the only U.S. military unit recruited on religious grounds; framed around Young’s and Polk’s mutual misjudgment during the westward exodus.